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The Trial

John Murphy / Rob O'Reilly

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Dutch premiere

Festival year: 2010

Ramush Haradinaj was a high-ranking commander in the UÇK, the Kosovo Liberation Army that went into war with Serbia, led at the time by Slobodan Milosevic. Haradinaj is seen as a war hero in Kosovo, and in 2004 he is even elected prime minister. But he is pursued by the past. After hardly a hundred days in power, Haradinaj is summoned before the court for a massacre that took place at the end of the Balkan War. In September 1998, Serbian soldiers discovered a mass grave containing 37 bodies in western Kosovo. Haradinaj is indicted for killing the Kosovar Albanians and gypsies that were found. In 2007, he is judged before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. We follow the events through the eyes of Irish lawyer Michael O'Reilly, one of Haradinaj’s main political advisors. He composes a small team of international counsellors to assist the prime minister during the trial. Their task is to prove the innocence of the man they admire. Did a massacre really take place, or was it a case of Serbian war propaganda?